


Perhaps and Maybes

by silverfoxstole



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Doctor Who (TV Movie 1996), Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Fluff, Gen, anniversary fluff, trying to tie the timelines together, very old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 03:41:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6837742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverfoxstole/pseuds/silverfoxstole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a place in the universe where it's possible to see everything that might have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perhaps and Maybes

**Author's Note:**

> I unearthed this recently on an old flash drive. Evidently written for the TVM's 10th anniversary in 2006 it was never published, so here it is for the 20th. Unaltered beyond a couple of little tweaks.

Ten years, thought the Doctor.

 

Ten years was a long time. But if time was relative, exactly how long _was_ a decade?

 

He had certainly changed in those years, altered, scarred by some of his experiences, but wasn’t that the same as everyone? All right, so his experiences were bigger, rather more unusual than those of the average person, but he had been affected by them just like everyone else, by the good and the bad.

 

Crouching at the side of the crystal rock pool, he examined his reflection in the mirror water. The lean face, a little more lined than it had been, the pale blue eyes and the long-fingered hands that rested in the grass were just the same, but there were changes, superficial and subconscious. Gone was the wild mop of chestnut curls, the hair cropped shorter, its appearance darker – and was there even a grey strand or two in there? The reflection wore a black frock coat with a green velvet collar – the only concession now to the fancy dress costume that he had found in the hospital locker all that time ago. He had passed his millennium some time ago, yet he looked in human terms as though he were in his mid-forties.

 

Change and renewal. Rebirth. Regeneration.

 

It had taken some time to become used to this incarnation after so long in the last, to suddenly adjust once more to being young again – would the same be true when it was time to become yet another new person? He already knew the answer to that – this was his eighth life, after all. Eight lives…he’d definitely been living too fast. If he’d stayed on Gallifrey he might only be on his second or third regeneration by now. But then, staying on Gallifrey would have been akin to being preserved in aspic or shut behind the glass of a museum display case. No fun there, no fun at all.

 

The Doctor sighed, sitting back on the grass. He’d been having these thoughts for a while now, wondering whether it was usual to have a little regret and melancholia when one had passed the millennial milestone. He certainly wasn’t getting any younger, figuratively speaking. There were a lot of memories in those thousand years, memories that had a tendency to sneak up and catch him unawares.

 

Often he’d caught himself wondering exactly what it was he’d done with this life. Oh, yes, he’d had some marvellous adventures, made plenty of friends and saved the universe on several occasions, often just in time for tea. But what did it all matter when ultimately he was as alone as he had been before his regeneration? What was adventure without someone to share it with?

 

So he’d come here, steered the TARDIS to the only place in the universe where all the realities, all the parallel universes and the bottle universes and the perhaps and maybes and possibilities converged. It didn’t look like much, a grass-covered hilltop with trees that appeared to have been inked in by Lowry and crystal rock formations that twinkled and glittered in the every-changing light from the energies that spun and coalesced in the sky. But it was those energies that made the place so unique. Here was where everything that could-have-been and might-have-been and would-be met. You could dive in at any point and change your destiny.

 

Or rather, you could, had the Time Lords not imposed strict rules on the use of the vortex. If anyone tried to divert their own time stream they would get into some very hot water indeed.

 

But the Doctor didn’t want to change anything, he just wanted to look. He knew that just looking would earn him a very stern talking to from Romana, but he was hoping that by the time she found out he would be on the other side of the universe.

 

Getting to his feet, he strolled over to the edge of the hill. Below there was nothing, a sheer drop into the maelstrom of the vortex. The colours were blinding, disorientating, constantly shifting in an incredible temporal kaleidoscope. But the Doctor didn’t look. He could see the vortex any day of the week. Standing right at the edge, he rocked on his heels for a moment, hands in pockets, considering.

 

 _Are you sure you want to do this?_ the vortex seemed to ask.

 

The Doctor raised his head, flicked an eyebrow at the vortex, and held out a hand. “Come on,” he said, “show me what you’ve got.”

 

And the vortex did.

 

_The Doctor saw himself, as he was now, as he had been then, as he might be or might never be. He was with Grace, hand in hand, on the back of a motorcycle, abseiling down the side of a glass building…with a small, blonde girl, running away from Daleks, Zygons, monsters that appeared to be made of melted toffee….he was shouting something, roaring with anger…hunched on the floor of a cell, cowering from an alien made of blue glass…stepping out of the TARDIS with an unshaven, gangly man in a raincoat with a cigarette dangling from his lip, an Asian girl following them with an expression of dismay…clutching at his chest, at his hearts…a red-haired woman spinning through the vortex…Venice, Singapore, Gallifrey…another blonde girl, smiling at him, her sea green chiffon tea dress reminding him of the thirties…there were tears in her eyes as she mouthed “I love you”…Romana, K9…monsters made of molten lava…Leela, the Brigadier…another man exclaiming “I am the Doctor!”…his previous incarnations…“Zagreus lives within your head…”…he was on Earth, a partner, a husband, a father…standing in the capitol, his hair cropped short, his Prydonian robes flowing in the wind…there were fires, explosions, miles and miles of corridors…“You changed,” said a woman with short dark hair and extravagant earrings, before she grabbed him and kissed him passionately…giant toys…monkeys and robots and more Daleks…a fish girl, laughing at him…a man with a sphere where his head should be, merging into a woman in plus-fours…dark rituals, black magic, vampires and werewolves…people with skulls instead of faces…the TARDIS breaking apart…clocks with no hands…a universe without time…Rassilon and Omega…rockets and space stations…Cybermen, Ice Warriors…a purple horse with yellow spots…a huge man in a greatcoat and a cocked hat…a planet exploding…_

There was a ‘whump!’ and the Doctor found himself flat on his back in the grass, every sense reeling. He lay there, his hearts thumping as they tried to regain their usual rhythm. Above him the vortex swirled and rippled in its familiar blue green beauty as if nothing had happened.

 

For quite some time, he didn’t move, images flitting through his mind, disappearing before he could properly catch hold and make sense of them. He was quite alone. Around him nothing moved, nothing changed. There was no sound, no breeze, nothing until…

 

A footstep sounded behind him.

 

The Doctor opened one eye, looking up without surprise to see her standing there, arms folded, her head cocked to one side. She was blonde, that was different, but her high cheekbones and almond-shaped blue eyes were just the same. But, of course, she hadn’t been there before. She had been on Earth, in San Francisco, where he had left her years ago. “What’re you doing?” she asked in her familiar American drawl.

 

He propped himself up on one elbow. “Examining the possible.”

 

Grace rolled her eyes. “I knew I shouldn’t have expected a straight answer.” She offered a hand – he took it and allowed her to pull him to his feet. He brushed grass from his coat and grinned at her. “Can we go now?” she asked. “You promised me dinner.”

 

“Did I really? In that case, dinner it is. I always keep my promises. Where do you want to go? I know a rather nice little Martian trattoria…”

 

“Surprise me,” she said with a laugh, taking his arm.

 

They headed back to the TARDIS together. As they reached the police box, the Doctor glanced over his shoulder at the ever-changing vortex.

 

“ _Thank you_ ,” he mouthed with a wink. Surely _one_ little change wouldn’t make much difference to the balance of the universe. He could handle one of Romana’s lectures.

 

And after all, it _was_ his birthday.

 

 

FIN

 


End file.
